the way to (t)here

Thanks to all of you who recently helped out by taking my survey on spiritual growth. I was able to get a good number of surveys completed, but still would love to get more responses. Here’s the link if you know anyone who would like to fill it out: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6FLGQTJ

Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing the initial findings via the blog, starting with this post. I’ll wrap things up by telling you why I fielded the survey in the first place. Stay tuned.

According to the early findings, most of us seem to be suffering from a light switch relationship with God. On. Off. On. Off.

The majority of survey respondents said they were not content with their current spiritual walk.  Sixty-six percent of  those people said they were “On again, off again. There have been times when they felt close to God, and times when He seems very far away.”

Most reported they had the knowledge and support they needed to pursue a deeper relationship with God, and only a few stated they didn’t know where to start  in terms of getting closer to God.

The most common reasons given for not successfully building a relationship with God were staying motivated and struggling with competing priorities. I’m sure in many cases, those can be closely linked.

Nearly half of the people surveyed said they needed a lot of help or all the help they could get in the areas of: Purpose, Wounds & Trials, Prayer, Witnessing

People believe they need the most help in the witnessing department and the least help in worshiping.

So far, the demographics of the responses have skewed slightly towards male, and are highly concentrated in the age range of 25-44. Most reported accepting Christ as a child.

I am still pulling my conclusions together on what I think the results really show. Interested in your thoughts on these results as well. Initially, I find it telling that so many of us (myself included) struggle with sustaining momentum in our walks. My experience over the last few years has played that out very well.

A lot of what I’ve learned about myself and my faith has revealed major drivers that perpetuate the on again off again rhythm that is so easy for me (and I suppose, us) to default to. I think this is an indictment on our typical approach to God, the support we receive from the church, and the negative influence of our culture, among other things. Fodder for future posts, I suppose.  

Next Up: Recommended Reading. What respondents said were the best books to help them walk more closely with God.

I have a friend that tells me often, “Just for Today.” He will remind me that yesterday is the past, and tomorrow isn’t promised. So, basically, I should focus on the present, and walk as closely to God as I can…just for today.  I believe this is good advice. It helps to have a focus on the short-term, dealing with the reality that lies before you. But I also believe you have to couple that short-term focus with a long-term perspective. Too many times I hear clichés such as “Life is Short” or “Life Comes at You Fast” or “Seize the Day.” This isn’t what my friend means when he proclaims “Just for Today,” but it is easy to confuse it with these slogans if I don’t have my mind right.

As Christians, we all know that our life on this earth is only the opening leg of our journey. That a Heavenly eternity awaits us. But many times, I find myself falling into the trap of “seizing the day” and panicking because I feel like life is passing me by, that I’m not accomplishing everything I want to accomplish. I get trapped within the artifical boundaries of time and space driven by the world’s view of existence. Sure, if this life was all I had to plan for, I’d definitely be behind schedule right now. In a world where long-term planning means 401(k) investments, it is easy to lose the forest for the trees.

We aren’t promised tomorrow. We are guaranteed eternity. I’m not sure why it is so easy for me to internalize the former at the expense of the latter.

I should act more like both of those things are true, combining a short-term focus with a long-term perspective. My actions and attitude would dramatically change for the better if I could make that happen consistently. It would be so powerful if I could combine “Just for Today” with “Just for Eternity.”

A quick aside about how God is speaking to me. I spent some of the weekend thinking about this post and journaling about the concept. Today, I was standing next to a co-worker’s cubicle where I saw a quote she had just written on her whiteboard. It said something to the effect of:

“I was living each day as if it were my last, but people got tired of hearing me scream, ‘I’m going to die!'”

I’ve had this experience over and over again this past year. Where God will lay before me an insight and then follow it up with subtle reinforcement as if to say, “Yes, I really meant for you to be thinking about that.” I never grow tired of that experience.

In closing, I have a few questions for you. How would you act differently if you truly approached death as only the first chapter in your journey? What if you really approached your time on earth as a phase of preparation for eternity? Would your priorities shift? Would you do things differently? How would your relationship with God change? What if you could approach your life in this manner, Just for Today?

It happens far too often. Something taps my wound, and like a cavity-stricken tooth meeting a cube of ice I am victim to a seething pain that aches and thuds and pulses within me. This “something” plays off the pain, and then spoon feeds me a lie. I am coaxed into accepting the lie, biting down on it only to intensify the throbbing. I get upset. Increasingly upset. Sometimes just on the inside. Other times visibly disturbed.

From here, I spiral, and it is as if all my teeth have cavities. Like they all might spill from my mouth like water from a glass. By the end, I am completely unwound and undone. And when I look back at what ignited this chain of events, it always seems so petty and insignificant. It’s hard to understand the cause and effect of it all. To trace the chain from beginning to end. For a moment, I feel defeated. AGAIN. And a mixture of anger and sadness courses through my veins, pounds in my head, pricks my heart.  I’m so disappointed in myself and my inability to break this cycle. To keep ending up here. In this very same place.

You can see how unhealthy this pattern is. And it’s only when I somehow find the perspective to zoom out and actually realize what’s going on, to recognize the pattern, that I find any peace. The funny and glorious thing is that when I’m able to do this, there is not only peace, but complete peace. I’ve disrupted the pattern, at least for the moment, and it no longer controls me.

I’ve come to understand that my wounds are pretty much always going to be there with me. And that no matter how accepting I become of them, they will have the innate ability to trigger negative emotions if given the most remote of opportunities. I also can’t stop the lies from coming. They always do. They are powerful and strong and convincing and so believable. But at this point in the pattern, I actually do have a choice. I can choose to believe the lies and send things rolling down hill or I can choose NOT to believe the lies and cut the pattern short. When I am in a healthy, balanced state, I do a good job of this. The problem is that I quickly forget it.

Since I’m actually feeling a great deal of peace this week, and balance, I thought I’d capture this train of thought so that when I stumble into a darker place, I can have this to remind me of how to return to the  light.

When I’m healthy, I even go so far as to anticipate the lies. To expect them. To wait for them. To look for them. To run toward them and take them head on. They are persistent and consistent. But these lies are never original. They just run along like a broken record. It’s the same old thing over and over again. For me, the lies are usually along the lines of me not measuring up, being good enough, being successful, being liked, being accepted and validated. Being relevant. Visible. Worthy. They just keep coming, the same line of them, over and over and over and over.

I know I use a lot of sports analogies, and I apologize for that. But really, there’s nothing in the world that you can’t compare to sports or Seinfeld to make a point. When I’m healthy, and balanced, I approach my lies like a batter in baseball. Hitting a baseball is one of the most difficult things in the world to do. Believe it or not, one great tactic for improving your ability to hit the ball is to guess which pitch is coming. There are certain scenarios when a batter can more accurately predict whether the pitcher will throw a strike or a ball, and whether the pitcher will throw a fast ball, or a curve ball or a slider.

When a batter is anticipating a fast ball thrown in the strike zone and guesses correctly, he usually makes good contact with the ball. Many times, he will crush it. And yes, if he guesses wrong, he will typically look really foolish. When I’m healthy, I’m poised at the plate, waiting for a certain set of lies to come my way. And then I crush the truth out of them. And I disrupt the pattern. As I just stated, it’s easy to anticipate the lies. And when you are able to do that, something that can seem so very difficult to master can become much, much more manageable.

I wish I could say that by now I always crush the lies. But there are times, many times, when I don’t. When I’m not in a good place, and I just can’t see clearly what’s coming next. They catch me off-balance. They surprise me. They overwhelm me. And it seems like resisting them is one of the hardest things in the world to do.

While I’m in my healthy, balanced, peaceful zone, let me encourage you to examine the patterns that lead you off your positive path and into the weeds. To seek out the lies you tell yourself. And then to extract all the power those lies hold by waiting anxiously for them to show their face and then laying the wood to them like you were trying to clear the left field wall.

And if you swing and miss, do what all successful baseball players do. Dig in and try again.

I say revival, and you think…

A week-long church fest featuring an overly eager guest speaker? Popping the tent and slapping the tambourine? Maybe even smacking someone upside the head to heal them?

Most of us have come to associate the word revival with an intense, focused (and staged) event intended to jar life back into the church congregation and create a “great awakening”. It’s supposed to replenish us, like we are a bunch of spiritual squirrels filling our cheeks and running back to our trees to store up for the winter.

In my personal experience, I’ve not seen many genuine situations where a church body enjoyed true revival. I’ve seen a temporary frenzy that fostered fleeting episodes of group think and follow the crowd mentality akin to the popularity explosion of the Snuggie or Justin Bieber. Those “revivals” are often short-lived and then it is back to business as usual until next year. I’m not suggesting a church body can’t experience true revival. I just think that when it does happen, it is more organic and inspired than the revivals I’ve been a part of in the past.

For me, revival is about a renewal of your fervor and desire to pursue God. Or it can be a restoration and healing related to a dark tragedy or deep wound. It occurs on a personal, not just a population, level. 

My revival happened two years ago and has been rekindled probably about every two weeks since then. I was in a slumber, and then I received a spark. And quickly, I’ve seen the spark fade and then brighten again, over and over.  If I’m being honest, it’s all I can do to keep it alive and “stay awake”. So far, it’s been worth the effort.

I guess my point with all this is that 1. you don’t need to wait for “potluck week” to have a personal revival, or your own great awakening and 2. while revival is a sudden combustion of flames, it can burn out just as fast if you don’t nurture it. In the end, I encourage you to displace your initial reaction to the word revival (at least if you carry the same baggage as me) and consider how you can achieve something much more powerful underneath a tent made for one.